Typography

type design, page layout, and font technology

type design, page layout, and font technology

The Fundamentals of Typography

May 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

The Fundamentals of Typography

I like books explaining typography, because they are forced to illustrate the points they are making, and the result is usually pages with plenty of visual interest. That’s what makes books such as Eric Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep and James Felici’s The Complete Manual of Typography so popular. The Fundamentals of Typography covers similar ground in a historically comprehensive fashion. Its first part covers the development of language and the history of writing systems.

This shows the gradual evolution of alphabets and the gestation of typefaces or font families. These expand after the invention of printing in the Renaissance then explode into a galaxy of styles following industrialisation. Gavin Abrose and Paul Harris trace this in detail during the second part of the last century, following each step of recent type design.

Every page is fully illustrated. In fact the explanatory text is almost an extended caption on each graphic. This keeps the pages lively, but sometimes sinks to the level of triviality when presenting a major item. The influential Swiss typographer Jan Tschichold for instance is summarised in a three sentence paragraph.

The next part of the book deals with the basic issues of typography – font selection, the spacing of letters and type, page design, kerning, small capitals, text alignment, and leading. I was glad to see that they consider type on screen as well as in print, and they end with a consideration of very basic design issues such as the use of grids, page texture, and legibility.

There’s quite an interesting section mid-book on the nature of page proportions (something the aforementioned Tschichold discusses in The Form of the Book) and the disposition of type on a page.

The latter part of the book offers a lot of interesting advice on the use of diacritical marks (accents), numbers, fractions, ligatures, diphthongs, small capitals, and also examples showing some incredibly subtle adjustments of the alignment of bullet points and hyphens. All the arguments being made are illustrated with real life examples from the commercial world of brochures and advertising design.

In fact that is probably one of the strongest features of this book, even though it is given a low profile. It’s important that young designers see not only a theoretical possibility, but its implementation in the real world in which they are probably seeking work. I was also glad to see that there was a webliography listing the designers represented, because these guys often get missed out in a general survey of this kind.

The last part of the book deals with digital typography – font sets which can be generated from a basic style. It also covers issues of readability and legibility (not the same thing) and type as image and graphic symbol.

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Gavin Ambrose & Paul Harris, The Fundamentals of Typography, Lausanne: AVA, 2006, pp.176, ISBN 2940373450

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The Graphic Language of Neville Brody

May 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

best-selling illustrated guide to popular typographist

Neville Brody is a now-famous UK graphic designer who shot to prominence in the 1970s. He became artistic director of The Face – a youth and fashion magazine which he revamped – and in doing so set the pace for magazine cover design which persists to this day. Many UK magazines are still designed on the principles he established – of a bold, typographically interesting title at the top of the page (Maxim, Loaded, Mojo,) surmounting a single photographic portrait. In fact he is part graphic designer and part typographer.

Advertising and logos throughout the world sport his typefaces and their variants. Only the other day I noticed an ad for shoes on the back of a bus which was composed entirely of one of his fonts. He comes up with designs which draw their inspiration from constructivist, modernist, and expressionist designs of the inter-war years, but he gives them a contemporary twist. These are two very stylish publications celebrating his achievement – and very attractive publications in their own right. Even if you are put off by the fact that Brody applies his undoubted talents to the ephemeral products of the worlds of pop and fashion, it’s impossible to escape his harmonious sense of form and crisp sense of design on every page.

There are pop adverts, albumn and magazine covers, corporate logos and design, fashion magazine plates, book dust jackets, letterheads, and even humble business cards amongst the designs illustrated here. The accompanying text by Jon Wozencroft is enthusiastic without being sycophantic, and there is a good scholarly apparatus which gives full details of sources. However, the principal value of these two volumes is that they are beautifully designed books, full of good page layouts, vivid illustrations, and well-chosen typography. If they are out of print by the time you read this, make the effort to track them down. You will not regret it.

Volume 1

Jon Wozencroft, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody, London: Thames and Hudson, 1988, pp.160, ISBN: 0500274967

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Volume 2

Jon Wozencroft, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2, London: Thames and Hudson, 1994, pp.176, ISBN: 0500277702

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The Manual of Typography

July 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

best-selling introduction to type and good page design

This book appears regularly in the Top Ten list of typography manuals – and rightly so. Although The Manual of Typography began life as one in a series of general introductions to arts and crafts, it has established its reputation on the strength of its scholarship, clarity, and beautiful presentation. McLean covers all the basics. First comes a brief historical survey; then the issues of legibility; practical considerations of paper types and composition methods; book design; and what he modestly calls ‘jobbing typography’. There are notes, a list of material suppliers, a brief index, and an excellent list of further reading. It’s easy to see why this book has become one of the standard texts on its subject.

The design of the book is based on a simple three-column grid, with a subtle rhythm of graphic illustration. This varies from full page blow-ups of a single letter design to marginal examples of icons, logos and glyphs accompanied by explanations of a scholarly density.

Yet despite craft origins, it’s a text which unites a profoundly sophisticated sense of taste with the practical aspects of typography. He ranges from the balance of page layout in art-books, to the nuances of letterspacing in railway timetables. From the analysis of six versions of the same font, to recommendations for clear systems of book illustration captions. It stops short of the computer age – but the range of reference and the elegance of the illustrations make this a must for anyone in visual presentation.

Almost every page of this book is a visual delight. Do yourself a favour. If you want to discover the the delight, the subtlety, and the craft of typographical presentation – this is the place to start. Whilst fashions in grunge and distressed type styles have come and gone in the last ten years, this book has remained in print and become a classic.

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Ruari McLean, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography, London: Thames and Hudson, 1980, pp.280, ISBN 0500680221

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The New Typography

July 20, 2009 by Roy Johnson

classic design manifesto of the Modernist movement

Jan Tschichold [pronounced ‘Chick-old’] was a typographist and graphic designer whose life and work straddled two eras. He was born in Leipzig in 1902, and moved to Berlin to be part of the modernist (and left wing) artistic movement which centred round the Bauhaus in the 1920s. There he met and worked with all the important figures of the Modernist movement – Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters – whose work in graphic design is used profusely throughout this book. In 1947 he emigrated to the UK and amongst other things designed the re-launch of the Penguin paperback series that became so successful.

Die Neue Typografie was first published in Berlin when Tschichold was only twenty-six years old, yet it represented – as Robin Kinross explains in an elegant and scholarly introduction – “the manifestation in the sphere of printed communication of the modern movement in art, in design … which developed in Central Europe between the two world wars.”

This is the first publication of an English language version. It has been reproduced in a physical form as closely as possible to the original – a square shape, black cover, glossy pages, sans-serif font, and greyscale illustrations with occasional red titles. Very futurist.

Tschichold looks at typography in a historical context, then explores the developments in twentieth century art and the rise of modernism. The principles of the new typography are then explained as a revolutionary movement towards clarity and readability; a rejection of superfluous decoration; and an insistence on the primacy of functionality in design.

There are chapters on the use of photographs; the standardisation of paper sizes [the origin of the DIN A4 we all use today] lots of carefully analysed examples of business stationery, and even film posters which evoke the visual ethos of the inter-war years. All this is illustrated by some crisp and still attractive reproductions of everyday graphics – letterheads, postcards, catalogues, and posters – in the red, black and white colour-scheme characteristic of the period.

Tschichold writes in the vigorous and ‘committed’ manner common to left-wing prose of the time – full of exhortations and generalisations, mainly focussed on the heroes of the New Age:

The engineer shapes our age. Distinguishing marks of his work: economy, precision, use of pure constructional forms that correspond to the functions of the object. Nothing could be more characteristic of our age than these witnesses to the inventive genius of the engineer, whether one-off items such as: airfield, department store, underground railway; or mass-produced objects like: typewriter, electric light-bulb, motor cycle.

Tschichold is also part-responsible for the Modernist ditching of capital letters in favour of all lower-case. Typographic novelty was perhaps sought more vigorously in Germany, because of their continued use of Blackletter or Fraktur (even into the post 1945 period).

The ornate yet corseted ugliness of European typography at the beginning of the twentieth century needed vigorous cleansing and exercise, and functionalist modernism appeared to be the goad and caustic required.

This edition contains not only examples of Tschichold’s revisions to the original text and a multi-language bibliography, but an excellent introduction by the translator Robin Kinross which puts the book in its historical perspective. This is a historic document, a manifesto, a key theoretical document of Central European modernism, and an important reprint. It’s a must-have for anyone with a serious interest in typography or design.

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Jan Tschichold, The New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp.236, ISBN: 0520071476

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Thinking with Type

July 5, 2009 by Roy Johnson

critical guide for designers, writers, editors, students

Ellen Lupton’s new design guide is in three parts. The first of Thinking with Type deals with the range, choice, and nature of the typeface you can use; the second shows how it can be squeezed, adjusted, and re-arranged for effect; and the third deals with the underlying structures upon which good page design is built. Actually, there’s a fourth as well – an appendix offering a list of hints on editing and punctuation, plus a comprehensive bibliography.

Each part is accompanied by an essay explaining key concepts, and then a set of practical demonstrations illustrating that material. Part One delivers an excellent tutorial in the history and analysis of moveable type – from its origins in the Renaissance printing houses through to the designs for digital type which have arisen in the last twenty years. She writes in a light, rapid, and elegant style which packs a lot into a small space. What she has to say has obviously been distilled through many years teaching the subject.

Letters gather into words, words build into sentences. In typography ‘text’ is defined as an ongoing sequence of words, distinct from shorter headlines or captions. The main text is often called the ‘body’, comprising the principal mass of content. Also known as ‘running text’, it can flow from one page, column, or box to another. Text can be viewed as a thing—a sound and sturdy object—or a fluid poured into the containers of page or screen. Text can be solid or liquid, body or blood.

Part Two enters the semi-philosophic realm of the relationships between text and space. Here she explains how layout is used as an aid to comprehension, navigation, and structure. She also extends this discussion to include hypertext and human interface design.

This is followed by solidly reliable advice on the basic techniques of type kerning, line spacing, text alignment, and creating structure and hierarchies of significance in a text by spatial placement and visual emphasis.

Part Three deals with grids – the hidden systems for arranging content within the space of a page or a screen. In fact grids are shown in use in the presentation of information in a variety of media magazines and books, catalogues and newspapers, and she even quotes Edward Tufte’s example of railway timetables.

The book itself is beautifully designed and produced. Each topic is covered in a single or double page spread; marginal notes point to the sources of quotations and suggestions for background reading; and almost every other page includes a colour graphic illustrating the issue in question.

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Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A critical guide for designers, editors, and students, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004, pp.176, ISBN: 1568984480

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Type in Motion

May 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

typography in graphic animations for Web and video

This book sets itself an ambitious target – to depict graphic animations of typography on the static, printed page. Bellantoni and Woollman do reasonably well under these circumstances. It’s is a high-energy, brilliantly coloured coffee-table book [with a fairly dreadful cover] – but also a serious exploration of the latest trends in type design in commercial and fine art. Double-page spreads are devoted to the work of individual artists or design agencies in this field. They cover film credits, promotions, conceptual video, early TV ads, and cinema presentations.

The collection starts with stills from the work of film title animator Saul Bass. [Remember ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Man with a Golden Arm’? – there’s a new site for him at www.saulbass.tv]. Unfortunately, even though some pages are covered in thumbnails of the sequences, the animation element has to be spelled out in words, which somewhat defeats the object.

Some cinema animations could just as easily have been illustrated with a single frame. The examples which look most interesting on the page are the shots of orthodox typography on promotional CDs (described in artsy-hype-speak as ‘interactive press kits’) and one page of ‘Shakespeare in 3D’ where text and footnotes intersect each other at ninety degrees.

Some of the video and TV sequences on the other hand are very difficult to follow because they are reproduced in small black and white thumbnails, and the pages in general are so crowded that we are not drawn in to contemplate the typeface. Perhaps the most surprising feature of all in a study of this kind is that the typefaces used in the examples are not explored in any technical detail, but are described in generic terms – ‘sans-serif, bold, outlined’.

This is an art book, with some of the pretentiousness which often goes with this genre – for instance: “270% Confessional explores the concept of multiple linearities, functioning at several levels simultaneously. The type sequence is an exploration of memory, verbal communication, and the visualization of a conscience.”

It’s a book which in fact deserves to be a film, or at least a website with .MPGs of the effects they discuss. Nevertheless, I imagine that those people working in graphic animation will welcome this as a convenient survey and a print resource. It’s a pity that there’s no index or bibliography, which might have given it more chance of being taken seriously.

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Jeff Bellantoni and Matt Woollman, Type in Motion: Innovations in Digital Graphics, 2nd edn, London: Thames and Hudson, 2005, pp.176, ISBN: 0500512434

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Typography bibliography

October 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Gavin Ambrose & Paul Harris, The Fundamentals of Typography, Lausanne: AVA, 2006, pp.176, ISBN 2940373450.

Tom Arah, Web Type: Start Here!, Lewes: ILEX, 2004, pp.192, ISBN: 1904705189.

Jeff Bellantoni and Matt Woollman, Type in Motion: Innovations in Digital Graphics, 2nd edn, London: Thames and Hudson, 2005, pp.176, ISBN 0500512434

John D. Berry, dot-font: talking about fonts, New York: Mark Batty Publishing, 2006, pp.126, ISBN: 0977282708

Charles Bigelow, Paul Hayden Duensing, and Linnea Gentry (eds) Best of Fine Print on Type and Typography, San Francisco: Fine Print/Bedford Arts, 1988.

Lewis Blackwell, Twentieth Century Type, Rizzoli International Publications/Calmann & King, 1992, pp.256, ISBN 084781596X

Lewis Blackwell, 20th Century Type: Remix, London: Lawrence King, 1998, pp.191, ISBN 1856691160. New edition of a historical survey of 100 years of innovation in typographic design – presented in elegantly publication which has become a favourite amongst designers.

Lewis Blackwell and David Carson, The End of Print: The Graphic Design Of David Carson, Chronicle, 1995, pp.160, ISBN: 0811811999. California dreaming. Father of ultra-distressed type. Carson came to fame by designing Raygun and has remained popular with the avant garde ever since.

Lewis Blackwell and David Carson, David Carson: 2nd Sight: Grafik Design After the End of Print, Universe Books, 1997, pp.176, ISBN: 0789301288. Follow-up to best-selling title above. More of Carson’s influential work – where type and graphics begin to merge with each other.

Joseph Blumenthal, The Printed Book in America, Boston: David R. Gondine, 1997.

Alexander Branczyk et al, Emotional Digital: A sourcebook of contemporary typographics, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001, pp.312, ISBN 0500283109. Showcase presentation of modern type design from the best of today’s studios – both traditional and avant-gard. Examples shown in wide range of applications. Beautifully produced book.

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (2nd edn), Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1996, pp.351, ISBN 0881791326. The Bible of typography. Beautifully designed and poetically written encyclopedia of all things typographic. Impossible to recommend this book too highly.

Christopher Burke, Paul Renner: the art of typography, London: Hyphen Press, 1999, pp.223, ISBN 1568981589. Scholarly biography of the designer of the Futura typeface. Mixes graphic design issues with politics and social history. Elegantly produced and well illustrated.

Sebastian Carter, Twentieth Century Type Designers, New York: W.W.Norton, (new edition) 1995.

Warren Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Carl Dair, Design With Type, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982.

Geoffrey Dowding, Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type, (Revised edition), Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1995, pp.96, ISBN 0881791199. Does what it says on the tin. Dowding reflects on the more subtle points of punctuation and letter spacing. Elegant, restrained, and well-produced.

William Addison Dwiggins, Layout in Advertising, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948.

James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography, Berkeley (CA): Peachpit Press, 2003, pp.360, ISBN 0321127307.

Adrian Frutiger, Type, Sign, Symbol, Zurich: ABC Verlag, 1980.

Simon Garfield, Just My Type, London: Profile Books, 2010, pp.352, ISBN: 1846683025

Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography, London, 1936, reissued Boston: David R. Godine 1993, pp.144, ISBN: 0879239506. Gill’s essay is a slightly quirky plea for the aesthetics and morals of good design principles. This has become a design classic. Produced in Gill’s own typeface – Johanna.

Bob Gordon and Maggie Gordon, The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design, London: Thames and Hudson, 2002, pp.224, ISBN 050028315X. Typography is only one part of this survey of contemporary design – but the book is so beautifully illustrated and produced, it acts as an excellent example of page structure and layout.

Bob Gordon, Making Digital Type Look Good, London: Thames and Hudson, 2001, pp.192, ISBN 0500283133. Beautifully designed and elegantly printed study. Includes the anatomy of type, rendering, technology, and fine tuning. Clarifies all the complexities of font technology in a very straightforward manner – showing how tracking, kerning, and hyphenation can be used to good effect.

Nicolette Gray, A History of Lettering: Creative Experiment and Letter Identity, Boston: David R. Gondine, 1986.

Robert Harling, The Letter Forms and Type Designs of Eric Gill, Boston: David R. Gondine, 1977.

New Hart’s Rule for Compositors and Readers, London: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp.182, ISBN 019212983X. Compact style guide to typographical and presentational niceties – from punctuation and spacing, to hyphenation, foreign words, symbols, and proof-correction.

Oldrich Hlavsa, A Book of Type and Design, New York: Tudor Publishing, 1960.

Richard Hollis, Graphic Design: a concise history, London: Thames and Hudson, 1994, pp.224, ISBN: 0500202702. Compact, well-illustrated, and good-value history of twentieth century design – including graphics and typography.

Sally Hughes, Design and Typography, Computer Step, 1998, pp.193, ISBN 1840780045. Well-illustrated and simple introduction to typography and desk top publishing – every point illustrated by examples.

Indie Fonts, Buffalo, NY: P-Type Publications, 2002, pp.408, ISBN: 0963108220. Beautifully produced collection of over 2000 fonts from eighteen of the most innovative independent type designers.

W. Pincus Jaspert, W. Turner Berry, and A.F. Johnson, The Encyclopaedia of Type Faces, New York: Blandford Press, 1986.

Rob Roy Kelly, American Wood Type, New York: Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1969.

Robin Kinross, Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History, Chronicle Books/Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, pp.208, ISBN 0907259057.

Alexander Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990, pp.428, ISBN 0241132673.

Alexander Lawson, Printing Types: An Introduction, Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.

Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A critical guide for designers, editors, and students, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004, pp.176, ISBN 1568984480

Mac McGrew, American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, New Castle Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 1993.

Ruari McLean, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography, Thames and Hudson, 1980, ISBN 0500680221. Popular, good-value, and well illustrated general introduction to typography. Covers all aspects of the craft, but ends with focus on book design.

Ruari McLean, Jan Tschichold: Typographer, Boston: David R. Gondine, 1975.

Stanley Morison, Letterforms, Montreal: Hartley and Marks, 1997, pp.128, ISBN 0881791369

Stanley Morrison, First Principles of Typography, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936.

Stanley Morrison, A Tally of Types, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Robert Norton, Types Best Remembered/Types Best Forgotten, Parsimony Press, 1993, ISBN 1884606008. Collection of well-known typefaces, complemented by negative and positive criticism.

Bruce Rogers, Paragraphs on Printing, New York: Dover Publications, 1979.

Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding (eds), 130 Alphabets and Other Signs, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993, pp.183, ISBN 0500277419. A charming sample book of signs, symbols, alphabets, rules, swashes, and pictograms. Highly recommended.

Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding (eds), A B Z: More Alphabets and Other Signs, London: Redstone Press, 2003, pp.221, ISBN:1870003330. Another charming sample book of font sets, signs, symbols, alphabets, rules, swashes, and pictograms. Highly recommended.

Rosemary Sassoon, Computers and Typography, Oxford: Intellect, 1993, pp.164, ISBN 1871516234. Articles on text massage; layout and readability; new alphabets using bitmapped fonts; the history of typography and its effects; the visual analysis of a page of text; and Sassoon’s essay on perception and type design related to writing for children.

Rosemary Sassoon, Handwriting of the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 1999, pp.208, ISBN 0415178827. Developments in the teaching and study of handwriting over the course of the 20th century. A historical record of techniques, styles and methods. Beautifully illustrated with examples – from guidance manuals, schoolbooks, clerks’ registry entries, and personal handwriting.

Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger, Stop Stealing Sheep and find out how type works, Adobe Press/Hayden Books, 1993, ISBN 0672485435. Very popular introduction to the general principles of typography. Well designed and illustrated.

Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design, Boston: David R. Godine, 1986, ISBN 0879236361.

Jan Tschichold, Asymmetric Typography, London: Faber & Faber, 1967.

Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design, Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1991, pp.181, ISBN 0881791164. Short essays from Tschichold’s ‘late’ period on some of the most fundamental issues of arranging type on paper. Eloquent opinions on page shape, margins, text spacing, and even blank pages.

Jan Tschichold, The New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp.236, ISBN: 0520071476. Manifesto of the modernist movement. Tschichold’s ‘early’ period, politically committed argument for ‘form follows function’. Original illustrations, and printed in period style.

Jan Tschichold, Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering: A Source Book, W.W. Norton, 1995, pp.236, ISBN 0393701972.

D.B. Updike, Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use, New York: Dover Publications, 1980.

Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design: The Practice of an Industrial Craft, New haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Adrian Wilson, The Design of Books, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995, pp.159, ISBN 081180304X.

Jon Wozencroft, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody, London: Thames & Hudson, 1988, pp.160, ISBN 0500274967. Comprehensive survey of Brody’s graphics and typography – in two very popular and well-illustrated volumes. Best-seller.

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Web Type: Start Here

May 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

from typographic zero to hero in easy lessons

This is a very stylish production giving an overview of Web type. Every double-page spread has been carefully planned and laid out. It’s a book which follows the same principles of good design it espouses. Tom Arah starts with a crash course in the history and principles of typography, then quickly accelerates into the computer age, covering screen-readable fonts, and typeface conventions. Each page is as deeply layered as its possible to be in two dimensions, and every topic is illustrated with several graphic examples and screenshots. It’s a delightful book to browse as well as to read in depth. It’s a great introduction to the subject.

There’s a very user-friendly introduction to HTML, with a quick-start tutorial on how to control layout, colour, space, and fonts. All this is designed to create more visually interesting Web pages. Next comes the introduction of graphic images, displaying fonts correctly, and making them look as attractive and efficient as possible. It’s all done via a series of thirty-three practical projects. These take you through the skills required to control type and layout on screen

He shows you how to use style sheets, and there’s even advanced stuff on the type-handling abilities of Macromedia Flash and Adobe Acrobat. There’s a beginner’s introduction to Flash which I found useful as someone who wants to know the basic principles. He even shows you how to do Flash tricks using free software – so you don’t have to buy expensive programs.

If you are frustrated by the limitation of font control in HTML – and who isn’t! – you’ll be glad to read his explanation of font embedding – which rightly describes as “the Web’s best-kept secret”.

This is followed by a careful tutorial on using cascading style sheets, which he takes one step at a time, explaining not only type control but page layout and the control of all design elements. Web browsers are still catching up with these possibilities – but he takes a look ahead to CSS 3, which with luck will create a common set of standards.

I looked at a couple of other manuals whilst reading this, and was amazed at how old-fashioned they suddenly appeared. Books like this are setting new standards for presentation and production values.

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Tom Arah, Web Type: Start Here!, Lewes: ILEX, 2004, pp.192, ISBN: 1904705189

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Writing: Urban Calligraphy

July 5, 2009 by Roy Johnson

hand drawn type on walls – contemporary trends

Those kids who spray graffiti on the sides of trains and motorway underpasses sometimes take their graphic inventiveness to amazing lengths. I’ve often admired the way they distort letter-forms into chubby round-shouldered block caps running into each other and overlapping so much that a name becomes more like a logo. Markus Mai’s Writing: Urban Calligraphy and Beyond explains the aims of these ‘writers’ as they call themselves – but he also goes on to show how the more creative of them turn their typographic designs into works of abstract sculpture.

Well, not quite abstract, because some of the more inventive actually become a three-dimensional typography.’Writing’ is the general term given by these spay painters to the graffiti, signatures, and logos they create. It’s an activity which has gone from illegal defacement of walls and railway carriages into the legitimate world of fashion houses. Agnes B and Calvin Klein now employ these former vandals as calligraphic designers.

The chapters of Mai’s fascinating book are organised in ascending order of complexity. First come the ‘tags’, the personalised name design which is shaped into a distinctive logo. Next come fully fledged alphabets which demonstrate the remarkable typographic skills of these felt tip artists. There are alphabets which are almost unrecognisable yet curiously beautiful.

Many of them produce letter forms which are distorted and elaborated so much that you would hardly recognise them as letter forms at all unless they were seen alongside others from the alphabet.

A major influence clearly visible is Asian and Islamic art. Many of the forms of urban graffiti look just like the elements of classical Arabic scripts. It’s logical enough in a culture which puts emphasis on typography and bans realistic representation. Yet it’s difficult to believe that the kids in trainers and baseball caps who spray rolling stock and motorway underpasses spend their time studying the Koran. Yet the influence must come from somewhere.

The most amazing examples in this handsomely illustrated study are single letters viewed from several perspectives, and it’s interesting to note that no matter how far the process of abstraction is pursued, the results always somehow retain an organic form. It’s as if the typographic and the human share some basic genetic material. And that’s all the more so since the same phenomenon is apparent in the case of Latinate, Arabic, or Asian scripts.

Next comes the fleshing out of these letter forms into another dimension. Shading and perspective are added, and the logos start jumping off the garage walls and the elevator doorways. But as this move towards abstraction and an extra dimension continues, the jumbles of letters begin to take on an architectural appearance. They become like abstract structures.

The next stage is the logical development of this process. The letter forms are actually realised as three dimensional objects in their own right. The graffiti ‘writers’ seem to be influenced by both architecture and organic forms, so it is no surprise that some of their more advanced work is realised in the form of abstract sculptures and three 3-D ‘objects’. Many of these are shown taking their place quite logically in art galleries or as public installations.

There’s also an element of socio-political activism at work her – but it’s not that important. What really counts is the stunning depth of invention in the designs illustrated, and the admirable presentation values of the book itself.

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Markus Mai, Writing: Urban Calligraphy and Beyond, Berlin: Die Gestallten Verlag, 2005, pp.207, ISBN: 3899550625

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Typography

type design, page layout, and font technology

The Fundamentals of Typography

best-selling illustrated guide to popular typographist

best-selling introduction to type and good page design

classic design manifesto of the Modernist movement

critical guide for designers, writers, editors, students

typography in graphic animations for Web and video

from typographic zero to hero in easy lessons

hand drawn type on walls – contemporary trends

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